Critics of a politics of difference have misidentified these social movements as asserting an identity politics of recognition. Most of these movements are better understood as resisting unjust ...
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Critics of a politics of difference have misidentified these social movements as asserting an identity politics of recognition. Most of these movements are better understood as resisting unjust structural inequalities. Inclusive democratic process involves paying specific attention to group differences in order to transform preferences and maximize social knowledge.Less

Social Difference as a Political Resource

Iris Marion Young

Published in print: 2002-04-18

Critics of a politics of difference have misidentified these social movements as asserting an identity politics of recognition. Most of these movements are better understood as resisting unjust structural inequalities. Inclusive democratic process involves paying specific attention to group differences in order to transform preferences and maximize social knowledge.

This chapter reviews existing research about women's political recruitment focusing on women's participation in electoral politics and social movements and civic organizations. Githens proposes an ...
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This chapter reviews existing research about women's political recruitment focusing on women's participation in electoral politics and social movements and civic organizations. Githens proposes an agenda for future research on women's political recruitment that includes attention to the importance of identity politics, reference groups, perceptions of opportunity structures, political role styles, and role models.Less

Accounting for Women's Political Involvement: The Perennial Problem of Recruitment

Marianne Githens

Published in print: 2003-02-06

This chapter reviews existing research about women's political recruitment focusing on women's participation in electoral politics and social movements and civic organizations. Githens proposes an agenda for future research on women's political recruitment that includes attention to the importance of identity politics, reference groups, perceptions of opportunity structures, political role styles, and role models.

Chapter 8 introduces the official republican case for requiring minorities to endorse national identity and to privatise their cultural and religious differences, in the name of civic, inter-ethnic ...
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Chapter 8 introduces the official republican case for requiring minorities to endorse national identity and to privatise their cultural and religious differences, in the name of civic, inter-ethnic solidarity. It first argues that historically, republican solidarity had non-ethnic foundations, but relied on fairly high levels of cultural convergence, as shared nationality was expected to function as a civic and democratic bond. It then shows how the historical model of national assimilation served as a template for the integration of immigrants and their children in the 1980s. Finally, it suggests that the public wearing of hijab has been perceived by official republicans as a symptom of a crisis of the national model of integration, one that sets divisive identity politics against the republican politics of inclusive solidarity.Less

Official Republicanism, Solidarity, and the Hijab

Cécile Laborde

Published in print: 2008-10-09

Chapter 8 introduces the official republican case for requiring minorities to endorse national identity and to privatise their cultural and religious differences, in the name of civic, inter-ethnic solidarity. It first argues that historically, republican solidarity had non-ethnic foundations, but relied on fairly high levels of cultural convergence, as shared nationality was expected to function as a civic and democratic bond. It then shows how the historical model of national assimilation served as a template for the integration of immigrants and their children in the 1980s. Finally, it suggests that the public wearing of hijab has been perceived by official republicans as a symptom of a crisis of the national model of integration, one that sets divisive identity politics against the republican politics of inclusive solidarity.

Chapter 9 challenges the official republican account of civic solidarity. It first suggests that the demands of cultural integration are too burdensome on immigrants who already suffer from ...
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Chapter 9 challenges the official republican account of civic solidarity. It first suggests that the demands of cultural integration are too burdensome on immigrants who already suffer from socio-economic exclusion. It then denounces the invisible yet ubiquitous ethnicisation of social relations that is both tolerated and generated by the apparently ‘ethnic-blind’ discourse of integration. Finally, it shows that the assertion of Muslim identities in the public sphere is symptomatic either of defiant disaffiliation from the republic, or of a claim of ‘integration without assimilation’. The appropriate response in both cases is not the re-assertion of an archaic and ethnocentric model of national integration but, rather, the implementation of tougher anti-discrimination policies and the positive recognition of ethno-cultural differences in the public sphere.Less

Social Exclusion and the Critique of Republican Nationalism

Cécile Laborde

Published in print: 2008-10-09

Chapter 9 challenges the official republican account of civic solidarity. It first suggests that the demands of cultural integration are too burdensome on immigrants who already suffer from socio-economic exclusion. It then denounces the invisible yet ubiquitous ethnicisation of social relations that is both tolerated and generated by the apparently ‘ethnic-blind’ discourse of integration. Finally, it shows that the assertion of Muslim identities in the public sphere is symptomatic either of defiant disaffiliation from the republic, or of a claim of ‘integration without assimilation’. The appropriate response in both cases is not the re-assertion of an archaic and ethnocentric model of national integration but, rather, the implementation of tougher anti-discrimination policies and the positive recognition of ethno-cultural differences in the public sphere.

This chapter discusses the hybrid political/therapeutic approach of feminist self‐help groups of the very early 1980s, which developed an analysis of internalized oppression that linked the political ...
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This chapter discusses the hybrid political/therapeutic approach of feminist self‐help groups of the very early 1980s, which developed an analysis of internalized oppression that linked the political and the personal. Like their immediate feminist predecessors, these women constructed influential experiential knowledge about child sexual abuse, expanding on the politics and techniques of self‐help. They drew on and contributed to identity politics, constructing a collective identity as survivors. They also sought to influence how professional psychotherapy addressed child sexual abuse. They have been analyzed as part of a therapeutic turn in feminism; this chapter argues that the therapeutic turn remained fundamentally oriented toward social change.Less

The Politics of the “Therapeutic Turn” : Self‐Help and Internalized Oppression

Nancy Whittier

Published in print: 2009-10-01

This chapter discusses the hybrid political/therapeutic approach of feminist self‐help groups of the very early 1980s, which developed an analysis of internalized oppression that linked the political and the personal. Like their immediate feminist predecessors, these women constructed influential experiential knowledge about child sexual abuse, expanding on the politics and techniques of self‐help. They drew on and contributed to identity politics, constructing a collective identity as survivors. They also sought to influence how professional psychotherapy addressed child sexual abuse. They have been analyzed as part of a therapeutic turn in feminism; this chapter argues that the therapeutic turn remained fundamentally oriented toward social change.

This chapter argues that there is yet a case to be made about the nature of identity and its political and epistemic implications. It is certainly not the case that the work we need to do is ...
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This chapter argues that there is yet a case to be made about the nature of identity and its political and epistemic implications. It is certainly not the case that the work we need to do is finished; there are numerous “authentic” problems of identity that need attending to, but we do not need to overcome identity as much as tounderstand it more deeply. An alternative account of identity is developed which will be used to show the inadequacy of the assumptions behind the critique of identity.Less

The Political Critique

Linda Martín Alcoff

Published in print: 2006-01-28

This chapter argues that there is yet a case to be made about the nature of identity and its political and epistemic implications. It is certainly not the case that the work we need to do is finished; there are numerous “authentic” problems of identity that need attending to, but we do not need to overcome identity as much as tounderstand it more deeply. An alternative account of identity is developed which will be used to show the inadequacy of the assumptions behind the critique of identity.

How can we think about identities in the wake of feminist critiques of identity and identity politics? In Identities and Freedom, Allison Weir rethinks conceptions of identity – both individual ...
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How can we think about identities in the wake of feminist critiques of identity and identity politics? In Identities and Freedom, Allison Weir rethinks conceptions of identity – both individual identity and the collective identity of “women” – in relation to freedom. Drawing on Taylor and Foucault, Butler, Zerilli, Mahmood, Mohanty, Young, and others, Weir develops a complex and nuanced account of identities that takes seriously the ways in which identity categories are bound up with power relations, with processes of subjection and exclusion, yet argues that identities are also sources of important values, and of freedom, for they are shaped and sustained by relations of interdependence and solidarity. Moving out of the paradox of identity and freedom requires understanding identities as effects of multiple contesting relations of power and relations of interdependence. Weir argues that our identities are best understood as our connections: to each other, to ourselves, and to ideals. And she argues that our freedom is found in these connections. If the question of identity is “to whom and to what am I importantly connected?” the question of freedom is about the nature of those connections: how do the relationships that hold us together constitute not just shackles but sources of freedom? Identities are sources of freedom if they are understood not as static categories but as practices: hence Weir leads us from a notion of identity as a fixed epistemological category to identity as an ongoing, dynamically unfolding practical-political process of identification. And she envisions a politics of transformative identifications: practices that risk the difficult work of connection through conflict, openness and change. Her account of transformative identity politics as a politics of identification thus moves beyond mere strategic essentialism to articulate a more coherent basis for feminist politics.Less

Identities and Freedom : Feminist Theory Between Power and Connection

Allison Weir

Published in print: 2013-03-01

How can we think about identities in the wake of feminist critiques of identity and identity politics? In Identities and Freedom, Allison Weir rethinks conceptions of identity – both individual identity and the collective identity of “women” – in relation to freedom. Drawing on Taylor and Foucault, Butler, Zerilli, Mahmood, Mohanty, Young, and others, Weir develops a complex and nuanced account of identities that takes seriously the ways in which identity categories are bound up with power relations, with processes of subjection and exclusion, yet argues that identities are also sources of important values, and of freedom, for they are shaped and sustained by relations of interdependence and solidarity. Moving out of the paradox of identity and freedom requires understanding identities as effects of multiple contesting relations of power and relations of interdependence. Weir argues that our identities are best understood as our connections: to each other, to ourselves, and to ideals. And she argues that our freedom is found in these connections. If the question of identity is “to whom and to what am I importantly connected?” the question of freedom is about the nature of those connections: how do the relationships that hold us together constitute not just shackles but sources of freedom? Identities are sources of freedom if they are understood not as static categories but as practices: hence Weir leads us from a notion of identity as a fixed epistemological category to identity as an ongoing, dynamically unfolding practical-political process of identification. And she envisions a politics of transformative identifications: practices that risk the difficult work of connection through conflict, openness and change. Her account of transformative identity politics as a politics of identification thus moves beyond mere strategic essentialism to articulate a more coherent basis for feminist politics.

The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially ...
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The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. This book argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity. Drawing on the writings of philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukacs, it identifies a persistent composite figure that it calls the “idealized critical subject,” which provides coherence to oppositional knowledge projects and political practices. It reframes identity as an aesthetic figure that tries to articulate the subjective conditions for knowledge. Harnessing Theodor Adorno's notion of aesthetic semblance, the book offers an alternative account of identity as a figure akin to modern artwork. Like art, it argues, identity provides access to imagined worlds that in turn wage a critique of ongoing histories and realities of racialization. This book assembles a transnational archive of literary texts by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa, revealing the intersections of subjectivity and representation, and drawing our attention to their limits.Less

The Semblance of Identity : Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature

Christopher Lee

Published in print: 2012-04-18

The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. This book argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity. Drawing on the writings of philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukacs, it identifies a persistent composite figure that it calls the “idealized critical subject,” which provides coherence to oppositional knowledge projects and political practices. It reframes identity as an aesthetic figure that tries to articulate the subjective conditions for knowledge. Harnessing Theodor Adorno's notion of aesthetic semblance, the book offers an alternative account of identity as a figure akin to modern artwork. Like art, it argues, identity provides access to imagined worlds that in turn wage a critique of ongoing histories and realities of racialization. This book assembles a transnational archive of literary texts by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa, revealing the intersections of subjectivity and representation, and drawing our attention to their limits.

The different positions people take on identity depend on the account one gives of identity's relation to the self, that is, the relationship between ascribed social categories and the lived ...
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The different positions people take on identity depend on the account one gives of identity's relation to the self, that is, the relationship between ascribed social categories and the lived experience of consciousness. Those who take identity to be an a priori problem assume a certain understanding of what consciousness is, or what the core of the self is, such that social ascriptions can operate only oppressively. This chapter develops the alternative to this account that aims to explain why the willful attachment to raced or sexed identities, identities created in conditions of oppression, is not necessarily pathological. It also explains how strongly felt identities can coexist with democratic politics and solidarity across difference. Most importantly, it explains how raced and sexed identities can be compatible with a plausible concept of autonomy and agency.Less

Real Identities

Linda Martín Alcoff

Published in print: 2006-01-28

The different positions people take on identity depend on the account one gives of identity's relation to the self, that is, the relationship between ascribed social categories and the lived experience of consciousness. Those who take identity to be an a priori problem assume a certain understanding of what consciousness is, or what the core of the self is, such that social ascriptions can operate only oppressively. This chapter develops the alternative to this account that aims to explain why the willful attachment to raced or sexed identities, identities created in conditions of oppression, is not necessarily pathological. It also explains how strongly felt identities can coexist with democratic politics and solidarity across difference. Most importantly, it explains how raced and sexed identities can be compatible with a plausible concept of autonomy and agency.

This chapter examines the idea that social identity itself is an a priori problem; that identities, under any description, pose dangers and commits one to mistaken assumptions when they are believed ...
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This chapter examines the idea that social identity itself is an a priori problem; that identities, under any description, pose dangers and commits one to mistaken assumptions when they are believed to be real and/or acted upon politically. It discusses identity politics and the theories of Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger's arguments demonstrate that the critique of identity politics often manifests ambivalence about the relevance of identity to politics. He does not really want to eradicate all identities, but to keep non-European identities from dominating American identity. Given this, one might think that what we need is simply a more consistent opposition to identities, pursued with equality across both the dominant and the subaltern. However, it is argued that such a plan is neither wholly possible nor necessary for social justice. The real danger is not the likelihood of balkanization resulting from identity politics, but the split that results from a wholesale critique of identity that then perceives minority agendas as a threat to progressive politics. It is this mistaken idea that is endangering the future of progressive alliances.Less

The Pathologizing of Identity

Linda Martín Alcoff

Published in print: 2006-01-28

This chapter examines the idea that social identity itself is an a priori problem; that identities, under any description, pose dangers and commits one to mistaken assumptions when they are believed to be real and/or acted upon politically. It discusses identity politics and the theories of Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger's arguments demonstrate that the critique of identity politics often manifests ambivalence about the relevance of identity to politics. He does not really want to eradicate all identities, but to keep non-European identities from dominating American identity. Given this, one might think that what we need is simply a more consistent opposition to identities, pursued with equality across both the dominant and the subaltern. However, it is argued that such a plan is neither wholly possible nor necessary for social justice. The real danger is not the likelihood of balkanization resulting from identity politics, but the split that results from a wholesale critique of identity that then perceives minority agendas as a threat to progressive politics. It is this mistaken idea that is endangering the future of progressive alliances.